Great Ormond Street

Decisions For Life

Season 2Episode 5ABC2March 17, 2013

This episode focuses on the work of Great Ormond Street's cardiothoracic department as they treat newborn babies with complex heart problems. Many are diagnosed before they are even born and improvements in surgical techniques mean that more of these babies are surviving.

Filmed over the course of a year, Great Ormond Street features unprecedented access to doctors from one of the top children's hospitals in the world as they make some of the hardest choices in medicine. When medical technology seems to offer so much, every parent with a sick child will hope that something can be done, but doctors must decide when enough is enough. For the first time on television, cameras follow Great Ormond Street Hospital's doctors into the meetings where they come face to face with the most difficult ethical dilemmas on a daily basis.

With a unique level of access, Great Ormond Street returns to the wards of London's foremost children's hospital. This revelatory series observes life and death decision making by the various highly-skilled teams working on the wards, and the many challenges they face at the cutting edge of children's medicine.

Episode two provides an intimate portrait of two surgeons in Great Ormond Street's General Surgery unit. Navigating between ground-breaking success and devastating failure, they must balance the risk of surgery against the chance of success.

The third episode focuses on Great Ormond Street's heart transplant team. Every year, the number of donor hearts decreases: safer roads, better intensive care and a society reluctant to donate means fewer hearts and longer waits for children for whom transplant is the last resort. The Berlin Heart is a revolutionary machine that keeps these children alive. However, it's a precarious existence as the machine can only buy them time until the rare gift of a heart is made.

Episode four follows the intensive care and respiratory doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital as they deal with difficult ethical decisions. Modern medicine means that most children who come here will get better and leave within a short time but some conditions are so complex that the children become dependent on technology to keep them alive. Parents and doctors must weigh up when to keep relying on technology, and when it is no longer right to continue treatment.